Best Tuesday

For me, it would be difficult to imagine a better day. I do not pretend to understand it although I have spent years contemplating it, but horses for me are a passion, something that makes me happy without reason, and as husband says, the one area of my life that I make no apologies for. I know my horses. Period.

And just having the equines around, especially the big Belgian blond guy, has relaxed a knot in my heart that I didn’t even know had grown there in the years I wasn’t able to have horses.

So anyway, we had managed to get that big Gravely stuck on the steep part of the road yesterday afternoon. Gravity fed gas doesn’t do well when the gas tank finds itself lower than the engine. So this morning, it was time to harness him up. We probably could have wrestled the machine free and been exhausted by it, or I could harness and have it up in about a 20 second pull during which Duke probably didn’t realize he was actually pulling anything at all.

Combing out his mane, cutting his bridle path again, fluffing his feathery feet, all of it is magic to me. After the pull, we had a photo op with the tasseling oh so tall hickory king corn, rode a couple of kids back up the hill with harness on, took the harness off and rode all the kids around for awhile, taking another photo opportunity, and finally gave him a bath. Next time I brush him out, he will be soooo pretty.

Husband says I really should do more with him. But there is the work of the world to do first. The rest of the soup beans really must be planted, and the other beans need pyrethrin again for the bean beetles. The back fields need mowed. The blackberries are ripening and so it is time to do the great blackberry jam-athon (we put up about 100 pints to do us a year). The cream is clogging the fridge and needs to be turned into butter and buttermilk and ice cream and sour cream and the like. And if I don’t get the bread made, we won’t have any.